Hermaphrodites, or What We Call in Modern Times, Intersexuals

In this section of chapter 3 Georgian Davis talks about the power the medical field had on the topic of the intersex body. Georgina set up an interview at a pediatric medical center with Dr. I who was a well-known expert of the intersex body. After the publication of the “Consensus Statement of Management of Intersex Disorders” intersex language had been replaced with the terminology DSD (Disorders of Sex Development) in the medical profession. As mentioned in chapter 2 she reiterates critiques that the medical field have undergone based on their inability to diagnose honesty to people with intersex traits. She noted that the medical profession can either do harm or good to the intersex community based on its position in the level of gender structure. In the medical profession, there was not always a form of naming abnormalities. It began with the Greeks and continued into the 18th century until they created a classification of the many medical traits. Sociologist Phil Brown argues that for there to be diagnostics there has two be two parts to complete it. One the diagnosis is technique which includes forming the classification by using various tasks and techniques. While the work diagnosis includes clinical evaluations and task. By using this form of diagnosis, we can better understand intersexuality.

Intersex is the general concept used for a variety conditions in which an individual is born with genitals, or a reproductive system, that does not fit the ‘typical’ sexual anatomy of a male or female. The measurement of this norm, is considered as ‘Phall-O Metrics’, which decides what is the right size of a male or female’s genitalia at birth by a scale of 0-5 centimeters.

Planning on a future in the medical field, I found the discussion and study of the one-sex and two sex model history incredibly fascinating. Humans looked at our bodies, along with other things, very differently in past centuries and sexuality was included amongst these other things. What sexuality is, what it means to society, and what it means to be a man or woman has actually changed over the years. History class has taught us that living in a different time period can produce a different experience of what it means to be human and how we live and experience life. Through recorded history, we have an evolving view of sex and what different types of sex are. Popular opinion of sex moved from a one sex model to a two sex model as alternative views and developments in medical science and technology in conjunction with change in the thinking of people regarding the genders including pre–revolution enlightenment, post-revolution feminism, separation of labor and the rise of medical professions all contributed to a change from the one-sex model to the two sex model as a means of supporting and protecting male dominance both in private and public.

In “Intro-How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States,” Joanne Meyerowitz writes about the beginnings of transsexuality. She beings the article by defining cross-gender identification, as “the sense of being the other sex, and the desire to live as the other sex” (Meyerowitz 432), while transsexuality, “being the quest to transform the bodily characteristics of sex via hormones and surgery” (Meyerowitz 432). According to Meyerowitz, transsexuality began in the early 20th century. Experiments on changing sex, began in europe on animals. Then in 1920, on humans. Joanne Meyerowitz writes that “the debate on the visibility and mutability of sex” began after Christine Jorgensen, an american who went to Denmark to get a sex change in 1950, became a media sensation in America. While professionals were figuring this out, people “who identified as transsexuals, transvestites, lesbians, and gay men” (Meyerowitz 433) were having the conversation and creating the language within themselves. This conversation on sex change, occurred alongside the sexual revolution in the 60’s, opening “the movement of the organizing of programs, clinics, conferences, and associations to promote study of and treatment for transsexuals” (Meyerowitz 434).

Through examining the ways intersex individuals are treated in a medical setting, one can see how science only allows binary bodies to be created. Crawley et al. (2007) discusses intersex individuals and the standard treatment of intersex children, being to alter their ‘abnormal’ genitalia to resemble one of the two genders. This has become the normal treatment as if this is necessary, but the only threat the child is in danger of is not fitting perfectly into the heteronormative standard of correct genitalia. Because surgical intervention proves we alter and change one’s sex, it becomes difficult to claim that sex and gender are solely biological, when clearly one’s gender and sex becomes largely altered the moment they are born into society. Anne Fausto Sterling, outlines her concept of the five sexes, explaining that intersex is a term used to describe any individual that doesn’t fit into the narrow categories of male and female. She explains that the same process that was in play in the Middle Ages is

In visiting the ISNA website, there are many interesting things that one may come across. One of the most interesting and important things on the site was the difference between a “hermaphrodite” and “intersex”. The two terms are commonly confused; in fact, most people don’t know that the two are completely different. Intersex is the politically correct term to use while hermaphrodite is a mythological term.

Medical practitioners have a history of not accurately reflecting the understandings of people who trans gender, dating back to the 1800s when they upheld the sexually dimorphic model that states that everyone has “one true sex” (Enke, lecture 2/18). Even in the early 1900s, medical professionals advised trans people to take hormones more closely aligned with their designated sex at birth, as it would help them “feel better”. However, medical treatment of people who trans has improved dramatically over the years. Now, in the 21st century, there are laws in place to prohibit discrimination against people who trans. In order to get from that point to this point, it took growth in both the trans community and the medical community. Medicine mimics society just as society mimics medicine, and as the trans community grew more forthright and educated from those within its community as well as the medical field, the medical field grew more understanding of people who trans. It is all a cycle.

Gender, rather than being a binary distinction between male and female, is a spectrum-- and so is sex. Intersex and gender non binary people have existed throughout human history, from the Indian hijra to the Indonesian calabai and calalai. Binary sex and gender are social constructs: they are created, idealized, and enforced by society through harassment, estrangement, and mutilation of those whose experiences do not fit the “norm”. By operating on healthy genitals to force them to fit a specific and exclusive definition of sex, doctors and parents who consent to infant intersex surgery are enforcing the social construct and allowing for discrimination. Let’s bring it back to birth certificates. With only two choices, male and female, there is little option NOT to assign

Intersexuality is the term used to describe a set of conditions which make it difficult to distinctly identify a person as biologically male or female [1]. This variation of human biology is used to describe people when genitals are ambiguous at birth and/or the genotype is mosaic—when some cells in the body have XX chromosomes while other cells have XY chromosomes [1]. An example of an intersex condition is congenital adrenal hyperplasia—in which the adrenal glands produce abnormal amounts of hormones that cause female embryos to develop a larger clitoris (clitoromegaly) and cause masculinizing characteristics later in life. Another example is micropenis—in which a genetically male person is born with a penis that 2.5 standard deviations or below normal penis length.

The subject of intersex individuals is a mystery to many, as it was to me before my research began. I found it interesting to discover that many babies born with ambiguous genitalia, such as a very small penis or a larger than normal clitoris were often surgically altered to make their genitalia appear more ‘normal’, regardless of their internal body structures. In addition, I found that many of these infants’ bodies were able to function without pain or discomfort and yet intervention surgery was still

What are the psychological and medical ethics of SRS and is it safe or unhealthy to alter sex organs to change into sex organs of another sex? There has been ongoing and heated debates on different spectrums of morality, challenging whether or not surgically altering healthy sex organs will help the patient in a positive or negative way, and the fact that both sides have seen both side effects in patients has made it difficult to find a middle ground. The argument was challenged when The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly in Spring 2009, published a medical paper by Richard P. Fitzgibbons, M.D., Philip M. Sutton Ph.D., and Dale O’Leary titled The Psychopathology of ‘Sex Reassignment’ Surgery. Which was subsequently challenged on July 30, 2011, by a selected philosophy paper in the Res Cogitans by Pacific University Libraries from papers showcased at the Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference called Sex, Lies, and Surgery: The Ethics of Gender Reassignment Surgery by Maggi Colene Hume from the University of Tennessee – Knoxville. Fitzgibbons, Sutton, O’Leary are very opposed to SRS for its medical dangers compared to Hume who believes SRS is morally acceptable. Apart from this disagreement, both have similar opinions about and are looking for the best interests of patients

For the hermaphrodite the hardest struggle I suspect is not having a place in the world can be extremely unsettling, to say the least. In addition, I imagine this disconnect is the center of many negative emotions.

Anne Fausto-Sterling further separates sex from sexual identity by discussing the experiences of intersex individuals. Despite what society expects of those who don’t neatly fit into the binary, intersex individuals generally manage to live happy lives. After this reading, it seems ridiculous that society has been allowed to determine what a person’s genitalia should be. As America begins to become more accepting of homosexuality, hopefully those who genitalia is a mixture of both male and female sex organs will also find themselves being more

Previous to the 19th century, most intersexual individuals led ordinary lives. Their genital difference was mostly accepted as part of the difference which occurs in nature. Intersex was never a health problem (Daaboul, 2000). It was in the 19th century where intersex became a medicalized and individuals born intersex were categorized as “abnormal” and “diseased” (Daaboul, 2000). The drive of medicine in the last century has been to “cure” intersexed individuals by using surgical, hormonal and psychological therapies to make them clearly female or male. However, the practical and psychological outcomes of this approach have been poor. Many intersexed individuals have suffered severe mental and bodily damage from medicine’s efforts to make them

A binary model of sex is a seemingly universal truism for many, despite “human and animal biology calling this distinction into question” (Karkazis 2008:31). This example and belief of two distinct sexes is a concept that is quite obvious and natural to most individuals, which is why individuals that fall outside of this binary classification can be quite “incomprehensible to many” (Karkazis 2008:31). An intersexed individual, or a hermaphrodite, is someone who is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy